I’ve been overjoyed by the response to Matt Godfrey’s readings of Video Night (over 130 ratings and reviews on Audible! Have you left one?) and Exponential. But while those novels were a perfect fit for Godfrey’s sultry baritone, The Summer Job demands a more feminine touch. Godfrey referred me to Stacey Glemboski (much like Con Season, Tribesmen, and Zero Lives Remaining narrator Joe Hempel referred me to Godfrey), who, I have to admit, absolutely leveled me with her performance.

Glemboski’s reading and vocal cast of characters is eerie, thoughtful, soulful and sometimes downright scary. I can’t think of a better narrator for this book. A book that Bloody Disgusting called “The textbook definition of a nail-biter... Cesare’s best novel yet.” and LitReactor hailed as having “one the best and scariest openings to a horror novel I’ve ever read…The rest of the novel is equally great.”

While Summer Job has done well, it hasn’t achieved the sales success that Video Night has, and for a long time that’s kind of bugged me. While I’d never say one of my books is better than the other, I will say that The Summer Job feels more personal, a full articulation of the folk horror/satanic panic vibe I was going for.

And, because it’s really flattering, I’ll end this blog with one more blurb, this one from Complex: “Cesare’s latest is a knockout…There’s a potent retro vibe running through Cesare’s work, in general–he’s the closest thing literary horror has to its own Jim Mickle or Ti West.”

Oh, and one more thing: if you were planning on listening to this book shirtless, maybe don’t. Cover yourself with the official Summer Job T-shirt, designed by creepyguy wunderkind Trevor Henderson. You can grab that here.